1. Explaining prosocial behavior: Why do people help?
Michał Wartoń

2. Prosocial behavior
It is a helpful action that benefits other people without necessarily providing any direct benefits to the person performing the act, and may even involve a risk for the person who helps.

3. Motives for prosocial behavior:
Unselfish motives
„It was the right thing to do”
„That was the way my parents rised me”
„The Lord put me there for a reason”
Selfish motives
Hope for a reward
Prospect of being rewarded by spending all eternity in heaven

4. FOUR MAJOR THEORIES that attempt to explain prosocial motivation
Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis
Negative-State Relief Model
Empathic Joy Hypothesis
Genetic Determinism Model

5. Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis
Person observes emergency
Empathy is aroused
Person provides help simply because victim needs help and because it feels good to provide help
It is the proposal that prosocial behavior is motivated solely by the desire to help someone in need (Batson & Oleson, 1991).

6. Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis
„It feels good to do good”
Motivated solely by unselfish desire
Willing to engage in unpleasant, dangerous, and even life-threating activity
Truly value
Experimental procedure by Batson and his collegues
Low empathy
High empathy

7. Empathy avoidance
Most individuals seek to avoid empathy aroused, thus avoiding the need to engage in something difficult
Shaw, Batson & Todd’ s research (1994)

8. Empathy and selective altruism
A person with resources can be motivated by:
egoism („First you take care of number one”)
empathy (directed at a single group member – selective altruism for an individual who arouses person’s emotions).

9. Negative-State Relief Model
Person observes emergency
Negative affect is aroused by the emergency situation, or person is experiencing negative affect based on something else
Peron provides help in order to reduce own negative affect and make the helper feel better
It is the proposal that prosocial behavior is motivated by the bystander’s desire to reduce his or her own uncomfortable negative emotions (Cialdini, Baumann & Kenrick, 1981).

10. Emphatic Joy Hypothesis
Person observes emergency
Situation leads to desire to act and to have positive effect on the victim
Person provides help In order to engage in an activity that has successful outcome making the helper feel good
It is the proposal that prosocial behavior is motivated by the positive emotion a helper anticipates experiencing as the result of having a beneficial impact on the life of someone in need (Smith, Keating & Stotland, 1989).

11. Short summary: Based on emotions Affective state as a crucial element
Increase affect & decrease negative affect
Feeling good & feeling less bad
Helper’s high
Depending on the specific circumstances, each of the three models can make accurate predictions about how people will respond.

12. Genetic Determinism Model
Person observes emergency
Unconscious desire to help occurs if the person perceives the victim to be genetically similar to himself or herself
Person provides help in order to maximize the chances of survival of genes that are like those of the observer
It is the proposal that behavior is driven by genetic attributes that evolved because they enhanced the probability of transmitting one’s genes to subsequent generations (Pinker, 1998)

13. Genetic Determinism Model
We simply do so because we are built that way
Human is programmed with respect to:
Help
Prejudice
Attraction
Mate selection
Clutton- Brock explanation to selective perception
Both empathy and prosocial acts depend on the similarity between victim and bystander
No evidence of a gene that determines prosocial behavior

14. Summarizing
We respond to the needs of others on the basis of a variety of motives. Regardless of the underlying reason for any specific prosocial response, it can be agreed that one very positive aspect of human behavior is that we frequently are willing to help those in need.

15. Thank You